One year ago today: September 5, 2023, yes, but I have videos.
Five years ago today: September 5, 2019, that lawn swing.
Nine years ago today: September 5, 2015, I was the youngest.
Random years ago today: September 5, 2008, probably a “calendar” post.
Here’s a new building going up on the lake in Winter Haven. I had to take this shot, you see, none of the balconies shown will actually face the lake. I wonder which whiz kid came up with that one. In this picture, the units on the right get a view of 50 or so medical clinincs. On the left, You would have to lean out over the balcony rail and look along the side of the building to get any view of the water, otherwise just strip malls. I didn’t stop for coffee, it’s going to take me a while to get used to the doubling in price. Hopefully you like reading, today I produce a lot of it.
It was lucky to find a shop even willing to look at my 386. This is a problem unmentioned in the media, the modular generation. They don’t repair, they replace, and now show a distaste for older equipment and refuse to learn to repair it. I talked to several millies already in their forties who actually pretended they did not know how computers operated before 2005. Maybe with gears and pulleys. It’s comparable to a garage not wanting to work on antique cars. They are shooting themselves in the foot.
The local music store only stocks $500 hollow-body basses. Strange because they must be amplified and at that point the hollow body is useless. I was there to price a new PA system, the only thing they have in the $300 range is a four-channel. Even the smallest Bluetooth speaker bar they carry is an inch too large to get through a sound-hole. The snag here is I pretty much have to buy a bass to test this concept. My immediate plan is to open that old PA to check for anything obvious. At this time, we have no PA system.
The gig videos reveal a tend, I am getting slower-moving. It had to happen but you can imagine the angst when you begin to notice it yourself. The spring in my step is gone. I don’t deny I’ve always put more effort than most into stage presence, yet that isn’t quite what is fading. My moves are not mechanical but I can see that things are heading that direction. I stayed the same size and shape for 25 years, and now I’m paying for it. I just know Taylor is going to feel awful about this, what with dumping that guy with the funny haircut and all.
More year-end info is getting processed early as July “disaster week” makes itself felt, deep and painful. Why leave it to the last minute, I figure, and it is inflation making it worse. Over years of budgeting, I often have categories that balance each other. For example, when I go to Tennessee, it cuts down my weekend trips here, and when the band is active, my personal entertainment spending drops by 5/6ths. See how that works? When I’m not playing, why go out, and if I am playing, even the drinks are free.
But undeniably this inflation is a killer. Prices have nearly doubled and no sane person has any illusions it was caused by the Bidenistas printing up trillions of fake dollars. The tax structure means it is really only the middle class who pay for it all, meaning they have effectively lost everything they worked for to a state willing to put everybody on welfare. You know the old saying, when the state is the only employer, any opposition leads to slow starvation.
I’ve tucked away the property tax money, I predict it will be over $900 this year, almost double when I moved in eight years ago. This must impose true hardships on the locals, but hey, they are the ones that voted for it. I doubt if one in a thousand of them even know the crap that goes on behind their backs at City Hall. The situation is worse in Tennessee, and one of the bank accounts has dropped by $1,000 not on my books. It is likely emergency vet bills which often slip through the cracks.
Overall, I don’t think we are slammed as bad as others, but that is hardly reason for cheer. When I wonder how others are getting by, I suspect maybe they aren’t. It would not be the first time they lived off credit cards between elections. I’m reminded of the stories of how Romans existed during the decline of the Empire. Bread and circuses. I noted two big new businesses opened along Hwy 17. One is super-high priced pontoon boats, with millions sitting on their display lot. The other is a manufactured home outlet, again, millions just for advertising, and it is amazing they still sell those in a hurricane zone.
Yes, I’ve lived in a mobile home, but I’ve never yet seen a real hurricane since I got here, just storms as bad as any in Texas. After a while, you realize certain dumbo acts are build into the Florida system. If not for Trump-bashing and hurricane hype, most English speaking Florida radio stations would have to shut down four months of the years. Except for NPR, where it’s eight months.
There is nothing comparable stemming from the Trump side. He doesn’t have to, for instance, the family of Walz(?), Kamela’s running mate (whatever that is) just uploaded a portrait of them all wearing pro-Trump shirts. Besides, most voters know these billboards are the lunatic fringe. Just look at the vocabulary, “deranged”, “nuts”, “bonkers”, “traitor”, and “psycho”. It baffles the Left how these accusations have the opposite effect on Trump. These are billboards appearing near population centers that are geared toward Trump-haters. The people who believe these baseless accusations are a permanent segment of American society. All they are demonstrating is how low they will stoop.
Abandoned house near Abilene.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Here we go, the growlers are off the coast on the western horizon, by nightfall we’ll have some amazing shows, Florida is the lightning capital. I’ve rigged up my power supply to test various tubes that have no markings and thus can’t be sold. Without the chart, it is trial and error to find which pins make the tube glow. So far I’ve had no luck. There are what, 72 ways to check a 9-pin tube just to find a ground. If I’m reading the specs right, the heater is what glows and that operates on 6.3 volts DC. There is the possibility the tubes with the missing numbers are all bad. One of the tubes had a crust on the glass, probably paint. I was able to scrape it lightly enough to expose the label 6DX8. My revised alphabet lookup reveals in seconds, not minutes, that this is a $3 tube of no particular distinction. Tomorrow we get the data sheet.
Reading more on amplifiers, I see the recurring theme of two stages, usually transistors. There’s your pre-amp and then the main or power amp. These are supplied with a DC current from your rectifier, I’m learning. The power amp is rarely adjustable, it’s purpose is to ramp up the signal from the pre-amp, which uses an arrangement of variable bypass filters to work the tone controls. Volume is through the pre-amp. If you see two tubes or two transistors, and one of them gets really hot, that is the power amp. How I regret not having the chance to learn this a half century ago.
Ha, Tampa radio just aired a nincompoop who has not read Karl Marx (the correct spelling), a caller who was such an idiot I had to listen. Marx is one of the more misquoted of authors. If you read the manifesto without regard to his communist solutions to everything, the guy was no dummy. He accurately defines and understands the nature of the problem. I find Marx makes two major mistakes. He thinks the poor are a result of mechanization of labor, but I think the poor have always existed and always will because they live by selling their labor. (Marx fails to explain how some people, such as myself, can sell their labor at many times the rate of others.)
The other huge mistake is his contention that while all problems have solutions, he believes the government is the entity to control those solutions. This has never been true. Along with the perpetual poor, there exists the class of people who will take advantage of anyone they can. This is partially why, I think, communism is okay in theory, but not in practice. You get nowhere presuming certain types of people are as honest as you are. You know who I’m talking about.
I’m hardly a communist, but I do agree with a lot of the points that Marx makes. There is a large difference between the artisan at home with his loom and a corporation running a massive spinning factory. But compassion did not stop the artisans from forming guilds and societies for their own mutual benefit, it is a fact of human nature, and is a matter of scale. If I work hard and smart, the rewards should be commensurate. To a communist, “hard and smart” becomes “harder and smarter” because he schemes to benefit by generating comparisons. Nothing is ever his fault and therefore those who work harder and smarter should be punished for their greed via forced income distribution (a.k.a. welfare). And then the communist wonders why hard workers like him but smart workers not so much. The communist fails to grasp how he causes those who have more money to use it as a weapon to protect themselves from the likes of him.
Don’t read me wrong, I’m against any class of society living entirely off inherited wealth. No man should have more than what he accomplishes or earns in his own lifetime. He can pass on lessons, opportunity, training, and anything money can buy to his offspring, but not the capability to prevent others from doing the same. I don’t pretend to know how this could be done, but inheritance taxes above a certain high limit are a good way to prevent political dynasties.
Oh, and I would eliminate any special tax considerations based on family relationships. Everybody pays the same tax as if they were strangers. That one can be hard to follow and easy to take the wrong way. If I pay taxes on my money, I should be able to favor my family with it, should I not? I already covered that. Yes, you could educate, incentivize, and smooth the path for them all you want. So if they work hard, they can benefit, but if they don’t work hard, they lose like the rest of us. No, coin-clipping is not hard work. I’ve had my fill of payday communists.
My system is not perfect and I don’t have a solution. But you can say the exact same thing about Marx. One difference is I would set you free to accomplish all you can while Marx would demand a share for those who do not accomplish. I should add that your accomplishments would be limited by the requirement to allow others to do the same. My point is, I’ve read what Marx had to say (both the original German translation and the later English version that loses a lot) that I know when somebody has not done their homework. Should I be taxed for that, too?
I could say more, but for the record, some of the points I disagree with Marx are that [he thinks] the government should outright control the banks, transportation, and education systems. That is so wrong. He also thinks prostitution is a form of private property that can be abolished, duh. Other things I can’t say I agree or not, such as the army, when not fighting a war, should grow its own food and that all laborers should be paid the same. That last one I saw the ultimate effect when I worked at the phone company. No thank you. I have yet to hear of anyone demanding pay equality unless they stand to gain by it—and that includes rich politicians.
Next, I ran some more tests with the voltage divider. No luck, possibly the circuit I made is outside the parameters of the signals needed to make it work? I never did become proficient at using the ubiquitous 555 chip. I’ve wired up a few years ago but never understood that much of the operation. I’m also out of practice calculating GPs, the geographic position of the Sun. This is the type of calculation I have to keep repeating until it “makes sense”. It’s getting there, now that I know it is one corner of both the “flat” triangle and the bottom of the “sky” triangle.
I still don’t have a clock permanently set to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). Hey, Elliot, you’re from England. What’s “mean” about it? This can’t be just any clock, but it could be if you want to complicate your life. It should be a stop watch that can “freeze” time yet pick back up when you unfreeze it. And, it should display the correct date in Greenwhich. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made that mistake.
ADDENDUM
Going over Caltier, it has paid 8.5% in total since I began investing 20 months ago. There are a number of angles to look at that. One I have not control over is how Caltier does business, but the plan is simple. The value of these properties is largely based on their rentability. I’ve written how important this is, that the buildings must generate enough cash flow to fund themselves until Caltier improves the properties to rent for more. Then according to some magic formula, flip the property. It seems to be working well.
The details are a mystery, but I can analyze behavior easily. During the first year, I recognized it was still a growth phase while they accumulated properties. It would seem they keep properties either just over year, or two full years. According to my educated guess, one property should come up for sale every two months and sustain itself at that level in the long term. This should keep them safe from the fictitious gains tax, since they would be wiser to sell than incur any penalty for nothing.
Most of the rentals involve leases. But that does not prevent breach my frustration and we are approaching the election of the century. Anything that stops or even slows down real estate prices will clobber millions of people. Around 45% of the wealth in America is based on real estate values, which no longer have any basis in reality. A drop in price in any urban area except the Democrat ghettos is a major warning sign. First-time home-buyers are spoken of in the past tense. Once again, while little of this affects me, I would not cry over people who over-extended themselves getting wiped out. Most of them need a lesson on how the rest of us live.
Here’s a warning for those who, like myself, keep a tight record of ATM deposit slips. Yes, I have them logged by sequence number and time-stamp. You’ve see the log, but not the slips, which are kept in old photo albums, the pouches are the right size. Well, something changes at our investment back this year. As I pulled the file, I saw all of the receipts earlier than February 14 have faded to unreadable, and you can see the progressive fading since then. Good thing we have the log for that is the Caltier account. I will now hand-print the sequence number on the slip with felt marker.
